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Al Jazeera Documentary Competition

Jhonny Hendrix Hinestroza is a Colombian director and producer with more than 14 years of experience in film and television. In 2003, he founded the production company Antorcha Films. He was one of the producers of the highly acclaimed Dog Eat Dog (2008), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He also produced Hiroshima (2009), No Autumn, No Spring (2011) and Upside Down (2011). His first feature film as a director, Chocó (2012), premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and won Best Film at the Cartagena Film Festival. He is the first Afro-Colombian director to direct a feature-length film in the history of Colombian cinema.

Pedro Enrique Ortega Lang is an expert on Cuban and Latin American cinema. He is one of the film programmers and founding members of the renowned Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana. In 1979, after studying history and cinema theory at the University of Havana, he began working at the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) as a programmer and researcher on Cuban cinema. In 1996, his expertise led to a position at the Cuban Cinematheque. He has been a juror and guest speaker at over 15 film festivals and forums, including in Brazil, Uruguay, Italy, China, North Korea, Russia and Trinidad & Tobago.

Denis Paquette is a Métis filmmaker and television producer based in Vancouver. Along with his business partner Carmen Henríquez, he has produced, directed, shot and edited over fifty hours of film, television and web documentary content, and is the co-principal of the production company RealWorld Media Inc. His filmmaking interests are focused on themes of social, economic and environmental justice. His recent credits include three seasons of the acclaimed Canadian TV series “Closer to Home,” for the Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network (APTN), and the feature-length documentary Cry of the Andes (2010), which premiered at VLAFF 2010.

Juanita Sundberg is Associate Professor of Geography and Latin American Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Her current research, funded by the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council, is a collaborative bi-national project analyzing how militarized approaches to border governance and territorial control impact everyday life for residents of the United States and Mexico borderlands. Dr. Sundberg’s interest in geographies of Latin America is rooted in personal experience. The daughter of missionaries, she spent ten years in tropical forests, rural villages and cities in Panama and Guatemala.